Anders Kelto

If you're an older resident of a low-income area outside Cape Town, it might be Gloria Gxebeka. She's a 63-year-old grandmother and retired cook who used to spend her days at home alone and glued to the TV, especially the Americansoap opera The Bold and the Beautiful. But now she's got a new job. She goes door-to-door, checking on the health of other older folks in her neighborhood.

Jusoisatu Jusu, 24, lives in a room in an abandoned hospital ward with her six-year-old son. They've survived Ebola. And now they're stuck.

"It's terrible," she says. "We have a lot of things to do, so we want to get back."

But they can't. They live in a town called Makeni, about 130 miles away. Public transportation around the country is limited or canceled because of the outbreak. And Jusu doesn't have the money to pay for a private ride.

Isata Kallon, a nurse at Kenema Hospital in eastern Sierra Leone, remembers the day 3-year-old Ibrahim showed up at the Ebola treatment center. He was with his mother and two older brothers, ages 5 and 8. They all had Ebola. Ibrahim was especially sick, vomiting constantly.

"The chance of survival was very low for him," says Kallon, who's in her 30s. She sits at a picnic table outside the Ebola ward, her hair pulled back with a hairband and her blue nursing scrubs tinged with sweat around the neck.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Tom Frieden has said his organization will soon be implementing new health screening procedures at U.S. airports. It's part of an ongoing effort to control the spread of Ebola.

"We'll be strengthening our screening procedures both at the source and at entry," Frieden said at a news conference yesterday. His comments echoed calls for stepped-up screening by President Obama and Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

What will these screenings entail? And will they make Americans safer?